Iron-On Vinyl: How To

So, with my excitement over finding this new wonderful material I thought I would make up a quick how-to post for anyone who doesn’t yet know the joys this product can bring.

This is HEATnBOND. I have no brand bias yet since this was my first experience with the product, but I have no complaints. I made sure to get the sewable style as I knew I’d have to stich seams together. It cost around $6.99/yd. retail, which is quite steep in my opinion, but I had a 40% off coupon so it wasn’t so bad in the end. It comes in 21-22” bolts just like interfacing. *** In fact, it was thrown in with the interfacing at my local fabric store ***.

As a slight side note: Does anyone else get irritated that interfacing (and now this product) only comes in single layer 22” strips instead of 45” bolts like every other fabric? I always get cranky when I to buy twice the yardage of interfacing as fashion fabric.

Any who, back on subject. First things first. Measure the pattern piece you’ll need to have plasticized.

I had already cut out the major pieces for the inner bag, but I still needed to make the inside of the drawstring opening. So that’s what I measured.

I’m a bit of a worrier so I decided to cut out a 5”x5” piece of vinyl to make doubly sure I had clearance. You don’t have to do this though. ***You can actually just cut the pattern piece out directly from the vinyl.***

Now’s the time you’ll also want to cut out your fashion fabric.

Tip:

Cut out your fashion fabric .5”-1” bigger than your vinyl piece. This will make it easier to center the vinyl on your fabric later without any bits hanging off the edge. The first time you see your iron touch this product you’ll realize why this is an important step. Let's just say it took me a good 10 minutes to get my iron clean.

Now that you have your fabric and vinyl cut out, you’ll want to place the fabric right side up. Make sure to clean off any fuzz balls or threads. You’re about to laminate it so you want it looking as good as possible!

Once finished, go ahead and peal off the vinyl's paper backing.

The corners are sometimes stubborn to get started, but if you just rub it between your thumb and forefinger it will come a loose. Don’t throw this paper away though, we will need it later!

Now go ahead and place the vinyl sticky side down onto the right side of your fabric. The HEATnBONDs ‘sticky’ side was of relatively low tac. This was great because it was really easy to reposition when I made a mistake.

Smooth out all the bubbles and get ready to iron!

Following the directions that came with your iron on vinyl set your iron to the indicated temperature and wait for it to heat up. *** Mine said to set it on medium with no steam ***

Now, this step is important. When preparing to ironing on the vinyl side of the fabric, make sure to place the paper backing you peeled off between the fabric and your iron. If you put the iron directly on the vinyl it will instantly melt into a globby mess. *** I just nicked a corner of the outside, but the speed of meltage was really quite shocking @_@ *** So I repeat, DO NOT PLACE YOUR IRON DIRECTLY ON THE VINYL. 

I saved a larger piece of the paper backing from an earlier piece I’d made. This was awesome because it ‘ment I didn’t have to perfectly line up the fabric with the paper every time.

Read your brands directions to know how many seconds it says to heat each side. I think mine said 8, but I didn’t follow it to the T. I pretty much just treated it like iron on interfacing.

Now you can flip the fabric over and iron the other side in the same way. Because you *wisely* cut the vinyl smaller than your fashion fabric, you can iron directly on the back of the fabric without worry.

You’re all done! Now you have water resistant fabric in whatever color or pattern you want! You can sew this just like normal fabric to create whatever shape you need.

*** Note: I would be a bit more conservative with your fabric pins now. Because your fabric has a plastic layer it won’t recover from small punctures anymore ***

This product has opened up the awesome ability to make PurseBud diaper bags without being limited to any specific color or pattern that my local fabric stores have on hand. I can use any color I want!

Pooh Bear Bag Update!

I finished the Winnie-the-Pooh bag yesterday afternoon and, despite my reservations about the characters, it turned out super cute.

My favorite part of this bag, aside from my love of its waterproof innards, is the fact that it’s convertible from an over the shoulder bag to a backpack. This allows for both arms to be completely free when needed. It also has the 6 outer pockets hidden inside the leaves and petals just like the standard sized PurseBuds. That means lots of places to stick toys,clothes, diapers, and bottles!

Hopefully my moms coworker loves it as much as I do ^_^.

Pooh Bear PurseBud Backpack

Iron on vinyl is so cool!

Okay, let me start at the beginning. I make PurseBuds. These are my own originally designed wristlets, purses, and backpacks/diaper bags shaped to resemble flowers. At some point I plan to make a post where I pimp out my PurseBuds, but I’ll limit this post to just the one I’m working on right now.

My mom has a coworker who is getting ready to have a baby and she asked me to make her a PurseBud backpack as a baby gift. I had made my aunt a bright pink and green one for my cousins about  half a year back and it turned out really cute, so she thought it would make an awesome diaper bag. Due to a craft show, and Christmas, and new years, then school…. I’m way behind on this project (I was supposed to finish it last month @_@). She’s due to give birth in the next few weeks so there’s no more time for procrastination!

Since it was going to be used as a diaper bag having the inside be waterproof was pretty important. Seeing as my lovely town is lacking in such fabrics I went online and ordered the obnoxiously loud bright pink vinyl that I would need to reproduce the bag. When I called my mom to let her know that I had ordered the fabric and was just waiting on delivery she got very despondent. Apparently she didn’t want it to be pink, she wanted it to be a pooh bear bag.

Okay, I’ll admit it had been about three months since we’d talked about the bag so I may have forgotten some things. And I’ll also admit that she told me the baby shower was going to be Pooh Bear themed... But I will never admit that she ever told me she wanted a Pooh Bear bag @_@!

I know that other people have different tastes than I do, but these are flower shaped bags… I would have remembered if someone requested one with a fabric that so clashed with the general theme. Gradient, fine… stripped, okay… even polka dots I could see in the right situation. But I would have remembered a request for cartoon characters on a flower.

I started to panic. I told her I’d work something out and not to worry. Maybe I’d make a zipper pouch to put in the bag in pooh bear fabric? But anyone who has ever seen the cartoon/books knows that neon pink is not exactly the color that comes to mind when you think of Winnie the Pooh. This wasn’t going to work.

I decided I would scrap the pink and start from scratch. I have another friend who is pregnant and wanted a bag. If she finds out she’s having a girl pink would be just the ticket for her.

So… what to do about this bag?

I went to the fabric store and looked at the different Winnie the Pooh fabrics they had. I just couldn’t picture any of them on a PurseBud. It would look weird! I was just about to give up when I had an epiphany. In the fleece section (which is overflowing this time of year) there were a quite few fabrics with relatively large characters on them. Making the whole bag out of the fabric would look ridiculous, but I could cut out the characters and applique them onto the bag instead! Then I could make it whatever color vinyl they had on hand.

So I had a plan. Upon perusing the vinyl selection though I was once again at an impasse. It was all ugly. Well, I’m sure that these colors would be great for lining boating seats, but not for a diaper bag. A diaper bag should be light and cheery… not brown or black. /sigh
I finally broke down and asked some of the employees if they had any ideas for me. One of them asked if I’d considered iron on vinyl.

What is this, they have a way to make fabric waterproof? That's awesome! I was so thrilled I almost kissed this woman. I decided to go with a nice light yellow and dark green for the purse (a relatively popular color combination).

I’m only about halfway through constructing the bag *** and I’ll post an update when I’m completely finished *** but I just had to come rave about this product. It goes on so easy and basically turns any fabric into plastic coated awesomeness! I mean, it’s not pretty per se. It makes fabric shiny and its no longer soft and drapy, but it’s waterproof! Which is exactly what I needed. I think that this lady just opened up an entirely new world of possibilities for me.

For now I must get back to work, but here’s a picture of my awesome Pooh Bear appliqued leaves.



Never underestimate me… I can make anything, even a Pooh Bear themed PurseBud ^_^.